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Considering how 'tanking' for talent acquiring has become a strategy in american sports, I hope at least we get to see this scenario with both teams trying to score own-tds/baskets/etc and fiercily defending the opponents goal in a match

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There's also the situation in American football where the team on defense purposely lets another team score a touchdown rather than stop them for a field goal, in order to have some time left to try to regain the lead. Also vice versa, where the player on offense will purposely fall before going into the end zone.

This one though is at least somewhat of a double-edged sword, as it's not a 100% given that the team's kicker will make a field goal (probably around 90-95% success rate.)

Or taking an intentional safety!

Time management is a huge important part of American football; books have been written about the (often unintuitive) results: https://johntreed.com/products/football-clock-management-5th...

The clock acts as an impossibly powerful defense that only comes to play for you after a time, and that can be exploited.

is this because the bottom team gets the first draft pick?

Exactly. Look up 76ers "The Process" if you want to see a huge example of it. They spent 3 years losing to reel in embiid and simmons.

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